War is always the worst

12 years of conflict with the Middle East is destructive to us all

By Mark Luedtke

Governments continually get worse because each administration builds on the excesses of the previous administration and grows government. With that in mind, the worst story of 2016, perpetual war, is barely reported compared to its scope. Even Britain’s Daily Mail admitted the U.S. is mired in perpetual war with its headline: “Fifteen years after 9/11, America in perpetual war.”

Estimates of the casualties from the war in Syria top 400,000, but the news rarely mentions the dead. Ten million Syrians have been displaced with refugees flooding into Turkey and Greece and then into the EU. American taxpayers largely fund this death and destruction, but it only warrants an occasional blip in the American news. Americans don’t care.

The U.S. rulers’ lust for war doesn’t stop at Syria. The war in Iraq continues apace for the 13th year, official or not, with over 15 thousand civilians officially killed in 2016.

Of the longest war in U.S. history, TheNew York Times reported, “With nearly 2,000 civilians killed or wounded and more than 80,000 people displaced this year already, the Afghan conflict continues to affect lives in record numbers, the United Nations said on Sunday.” That was in April. Officially, 2,326 U.S. servicemen have been killed and 20,049 wounded in the Afghan war.

If these wars received little mainstream media coverage, the war in Yemen received none. Antiwar.com informs, “While the world is transfixed on the epic tragedy unfolding in Syria, another tragedy—a hidden one—has been consuming the children of Yemen. Battered by the twin evils of war and hunger, every ten minutes a child in Yemen is now dying from malnutrition, diarrhea, and respiratory-tract infections. A new UNICEF report shows over 400,000 Yemeni children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Without immediate medical attention, these children will die. The situation is so dire that over half of the entire nation’s 25 million people lack sufficient food.”

A Saudi Arabian bombing campaign and naval blockade is the main culprit, but the article indicts, “With U.S. weapons and logistical support, the Saudis have been pounding Yemen. This 20-month-old Saudi bombing campaign has not only killed thousands of innocent Yemenis, but sparked a severe humanitarian crisis in the poorest country in the Middle East.”

U.S. Special Forces are also killing in Yemen. If you thought leftists really cared about children, you were mistaken. Leftists party while their messiah, President Obama, starves children.

There’s a simple solution to stopping this perpetual mass murder: end the wars and bring the troops home. It will make us all safer, freer, and more prosperous.

Perpetual war produces terrible consequences. Decades of U.S. wars in the Middle East, not just since 9/11, have motivated unprecedented terrorist attacks against Americans, including 9/11. Because of perpetual war, we live under a perpetual threat of terrorism. It doesn’t matter if terrorists are part of a network or lone wolves. Rulers make that distinction to distract us from examining the root cause of terrorist attacks against us: the wars themselves. Mass murdering innocent men, women, and children radicalizes their families, friends, and sympathizers.

War is also a tremendous destruction of wealth, which makes us all poorer. The return of soldiers after WWII created an economic boom in the U.S. for more than a decade. Bringing home American warfighters today and empowering them to work in the private sector would do the same.

Like warfighters, war machine workers—war profiteers all—also destroy wealth. Putting them to work in productive jobs would make us all wealthier. It would also reduce the political impetus for war.

Perpetual war leads to militarized police and unrestrained spying. It’s not just excess military equipment that militarizes police. Many policemen come from the military. The military mindset takes over. And war always demands more spying.

The next worst part of 2016 is the growing economic bubble. The bigger it gets, the worse the crash will be. The damage is done when resources are misallocated to unsustainable businesses, like local explosions in pizza joints and brew pubs. As much as Americans, including me, love pizza and beer, many of these businesses are fueled by artificially low interest rates, not honest demand. Labor and materials will be exposed as having been wasted when many go bankrupt during the bust.

But the bust is the healing process. I hope it comes as soon as possible. Maybe it will end the wars, too.

The views and opinions expressed in Conspiracy Theorist are the views and/or opinions of the author and do not reflect the views and/or opinions of the Dayton City Paper or Dayton City Media and are published strictly for entertainment purposes.